ABSTRACT
Normal adolescents and young adults, like the rest of us, want to feel intrinsically good about themselves, to feel as an integral part of a community, to adhere to a meaningful system of values, and to contribute to the welfare of others (Hamburg, 1986; Levine, 1987). They have been manifesting, since time immemorial, developmental “evidence” of these issues, which are of vital importance to them. We in psychiatry, however, have too often chosen to construe these behaviors and beliefs narrowly, within the parameters of our own professional purview—that is, the psychopathological, the aberrant, the deviant—instead of exploring the wider spectrum of normative behaviors.
